Menninger, William Claire 1899-1966

ADVOCATE FOR MENTAL-HEALTH TREATMENT

Contributions to Psychiatry.

Psychiatry was a field few American medical practitioners knew much about in the 1940s. There was a widespread notion that psychiatry was either hilariously funny or sacrilegious or maybe even subversive. The popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis in the United States contributed to this perception. William Claire Menninger greatly contributed to a new perspective on psychiatry in the United States and to the rapid development of the field. Because of the large number of psychiatric problems and casualties in the U.S. Army during World War II, Surgeon General Norman T. Kirk declared psychiatry equal to medicine and surgery, and in December 1943 he appointed Brig. Gen. William Menninger as director of the Neuropsychiatry Consultants Division. As Menninger directed the expansion of the army's psychiatric work, his good-humored personality and professional...

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